The Inspiration for my new crime mystery Chasing the Dark – by guest author, Sam Hepburn

This week, we are delighted to welcome Sam Hepburn as our guest author at the Edge. Her new novel Chasing the Dark is out now! Over to you, Sam …

Inspiration is such a strange and slippery thing. For me, the seeds of a story seem to take root when a memory from the distant past is triggered by something that catches my attention in the present. That is exactly how this scrap of paper came to spark the plot for my new book Chasing the Dark.

I found it lying in the street when I was trying to come up with the plot for a crime mystery. I can’t even remember where I was at the time but it made such an impression on me that I took it home, pinned it to the notice board beside my desk and looked at it all the time I was thinking about the plot.

The little boy is smiling at the camera, happily leaning back in his mother’s arms and obviously feeling safe and secure. His mum however, is looking off into the distance. Is she thinking about the future or the past? Has someone or something caught her attention? You get the feeling that these two are alone in the world, so perhaps she is a single mum. If you look more closely you can see that the image has been created from two separate pictures put together with a ragged white rip passing between the two figures. While the little boy is surrounded by warm red bricks and the homely clutter of garden chairs, the mother is cut off by a bleak cold wall, as if he has a future and she does not.

The boy also appears to be mixed race, which resonated with me because I am the child of a white English mother and an absent African father, a combination that is commonplace nowadays but pretty rare when I was growing up in the 1960s and 70s. This is a picture of me and my mother taken when I must have been about two.

So I was interested in exploring the strengths and tensions within a modern single parent family with a missing African father and the more I looked at the image on my notice board the more it began to shape the back story of Joe Slattery, the fourteen year old hero of Chasing the Dark.

All he knows about his father is that he was a Kenyan student who went back to Nairobi before Joe was born. His mum Sadie has struggled to bring him up, earning a precarious living by singing in pubs and clubs and performing at weddings. They live on a rundown housing estate in North London and although they have their problems their bond is extremely close. Joe’s whole world is therefore ripped apart when his mum is killed in a hit and run car crash alongside a well-known investigative journalist. Since Sadie never accepted lifts from strangers, the only conclusion Joe can draw is that for some reason the journalist had met her by arrangement before driving her home. Joe is overwhelmed by a burning desire to know what that reason was and as he struggles with his grief he begins a desperate chase through a dangerous world of secrets, lies and conspiracy.

Part of that conspiracy was inspired by a documentary I made for the BBC nearly twenty years ago, called “The Picasso Files”, all about the files that the Soviet Secret Service had kept on the artist Pablo Picasso during the cold war. It gave me a fascinating insight into the way the KGB ran their spying operations. The KGB archive in Moscow sent me a huge box of photocopied files in Russian which I sent off to a translator. When the translations came back I realised that some of the pages had nothing to do with Picasso and had quite obviously been misfiled. To be honest, what was on them was really unexciting but I have always wondered what would happen if a few pages that were still top secret accidentally found their way into the hands of a reporter. Then, a couple of years ago, I read that the government in Ukraine were opening up some of their KGB archive to the public. When I discovered that former Soviet spies were panicking because top secret files really were falling into the hands of journalists I knew I’d found the key to the mystery at the heart of Chasing the Dark.

Chasing the Dark is out now, published by Chicken House.

Find out more about Sam Hepburn at www.samhepburnbooks.com

Thanks to Sam for being this week's guest at the Edge.

An Edge Too Far? – by Guest Author Cathy MacPhail

This week we are delighted to welcome best-selling author Cathy MacPhail as our guest at The Edge …

A boy witnesses a man tumbling to his death from the top of a tower block, and landing with a Splat!

This is how my next book, Mosi’s War begins. Well, you’ve got to hook them from the beginning, haven’t you? 

From then on there are machete fights, riots, murder, a bit of slicing and dicing, cannibalism … oh, and a vampire … did I mention a vampire? All in the name of gritty realism.

But this is a book about a young African asylum seeker who harbours a terrible secret, and who then sees, right there in the Glasgow estate where he lives, someone from his past, someone who terrifies him. So in order for it to be truthful, it had to be violent.

But that’s the dilemma about writing young adult fiction, especially when, like me, you write for the younger adult age group. 

Just how truthful, how graphic, should you be?

I know there is a debate at the moment about just what subjects you can tackle in young adult fiction. And the answer seems to be, you can tackle anything you want, it is the way you handle the subject that matters.

You want your book to be as honest as possible, but you also want your book to be accessible not only for the age group you’re writing for, but also acceptable for teachers, parents and librarians too.

Personally, I look at it is as a challenge to be overcome, rather than a problem that has to be faced. 

I think there are always ways to get round it. For instance, we all know a lot of children swear, but I wouldn’t get away with a load of swear words in my books, nor would I want to. And after all, if you were adapting your book for children’s television you wouldn’t be allowed swear words. The challenge is to depict your characters’ dialogue honestly without using any actual swear words in your story.

Overcoming that challenge is something I enjoy. We know dark things can go on in a young person’s life, but we can hint at it, without being too specific or graphic. What you leave out can be as important as what you put in.

I’ve been lucky, from the beginning I have written about dark subjects, and I have never had anyone say, that’s too dark, cut it out. In Grass, a boy witnesses a gangster blast the life out of another gangster and I’ve read that scene out at schools, even primary schools and you can hear a pin drop when I do, and never once has a teacher told me it was too graphic.

I wrote Roxy’s Baby after hearing a report on radio about a girl who had come to this country and then found out she was pregnant. People offered to look after her and she thought they were being kind. When the baby was born they told her the baby had died. Only later did she find out the horrific truth. The baby had been sold on for its organs. I had never heard anything so horrific. I knew I wanted to write that book, but how could I possibly write a book about such a horrific subject when I write for such a young market. How could I make this book accessible to my readers, and still be honest? Then I realised I could put a young girl, perhaps 14, into my story, and at fourteen I would never suspect such a horrendous truth. My fourteen year old imagination’s worst nightmare would be that they were witches, and wanted my baby for some kind of blood sacrifice, and so Roxy never finds out the truth till the very end, and neither do the readers. And once again, I have never been told at any high school not to talk about Roxy’s Baby.

So I think there are always ways round any topic, no matter how dark and edgy and gritty. Put a young person in there and see it through their eyes, see how they would deal with it at their age.

I’m so glad I was allowed the violence and blood that there is in Mosi’s War. It’s a book about a boy soldier, and the terrible things he has had to do to survive. It had to be gritty. But it’s also a book about a boy, who has had his childhood taken away from him, who has lost his belief in everything, and who, in the end, gets his faith back.

And that was the only thing I wasn’t allowed to mention … God.

It seems He was an edge too far.

-------------------------------------- 

For more information visit Cathy's website and blog.

Follow her on Twitter @CathyMacphail

How Far Can You Go in Young Adult Fiction? by guest author Anne Cassidy

Another treat for you this week, as we welcome award-winning author, Anne Cassidy, as our guest at The Edge.

I’ve been writing young adult fiction for over twenty years. My first book was about a violent murder and it involved teen pregnancy/sex/pornography/love. It was called Big Girls’ Shoes (a line that was triggered by an Elvis Costello song, Big Sister’s Clothes). It didn’t sell many copies but it did lay down a kind of template for the books I was going to write.

Since then I’ve written about thirty young adult fiction novels. I’m best known for Looking For JJ, a story about a ten year old girl who killed her friend and was sent to a secure unit. She is released when she is seventeen and the story is about how her life is shaped by what she did when she was ten. This book has violence/pornography/love and lots of other things.

The question of how far you can go is, for me, a matter of taste rather than censorship. My books deal with dark things, adult things and I make no apology for writing them for a teenage audience. When I was a teenager I was desperate to get my hands on adult novels (the more risqué the better) to find out what was really going on in the adult world. I hated the way I was excluded from things in that world. I was expected to be grown up and sensible at school but when it came to knowing what was going on, about life as it was lived, then I was kept in the dark because of my age.

So I would cover just about any dark subject for a young adult audience. The way in which I would cover it would reflect the kind of books I like to read. For example I’ve read a range of serial killer/torture chamber/gore books and frankly I find them laughable. So if I’m writing about a murderer who kills young girls I will have a lot of the violence off camera so to speak. Not because I’m worried that librarians won’t buy my books but because I think it’s better to leave some stuff to the imagination. How scary the film Alien was for NOT seeing the creature. Also The Blair Witch Project. It’s the old saying LESS IS MORE and this works so perfectly for young adult fiction.

The same goes for sex. I like to have sex in my books. My memories of being a teen involved thinking about sex an awful lot (although not doing very much). So any account of teenage life has to have sex in it. However I don’t want readers cringing at sex scenes so I leave a lot of it unstated. I hint, I imply. The unclasping of a belt or the unbuttoning of a shirt might be enough. I think we all know what will happen next.

The main reason that I try to be honest in my storytelling is because I thinks young adults demand it in a way that no other group do. If you try to peddle some made up version of what teen life is like (or what some people wish it was like) you’ll get found out by your readers. They’re a sharp lot. It takes them a long time to pick up a book to read but only a second to put it down again.

Anne Cassidy’s new series THE MURDER NOTEBOOKS begins with Dead Time, which has been nominated for the 2013 Carnegie Medal. 

The second of the series Killing Rachel will be out in March 2013.

To find out more about Anne and her books visit www.annecassidy.com.

Finally, thanks to Anne for being this week's guest author at The Edge.

The Edge, an uncomfortable place to be … by guest author, Celia Rees

This week we are delighted to welcome award-winning author, Celia Rees as our guest at the Edge.

I have to thank Miriam Halahmy for introducing me to The Edge and asking me if I’d like to contribute to a site devoted to ‘Sharp fiction for young adults and teens’. I have always believed that there is a place for just this kind of fiction, positioned between children’s books and fully adult writing, offering a staging post, a stepping stone between the two. It is a vitally important, necessary fiction, but a tricky area. The Edge can be an uncomfortable place. Get it WRONG and you will be accused of preaching, patronizing, being out of touch in an embarrassing ‘Dad Dancing’ way. Get it RIGHT and you might delight the readers but dismay the gatekeepers and risk not being published at all.

Tricky lot, older teens.

I began writing as a response to just this difficult group. I was an English teacher and my 14 – 16 year old students seemed to have turned themselves off reading because, they said, there was nothing for them, nothing that reflected life as they experienced it. They were almost adults, but the fiction on offer did not treat them that way. There wasn’t much to intrigue, engage, engross them on a grown up level. This didn’t mean that they read nothing. 

There were authors they consumed with great appetite. American authors like Robert Cormier, Lois Duncan, Patricia Windsor and Ursula Le Guin but their output was relatively small and when these readers wanted to, they could read fast. It seemed to me that what these writers had in common was an ability to write exciting, genre fiction with teenage characters at the centre of the action but with added value. These books were uncompromising, not just in subject matter but also in the complexity of the story telling, the way they were written. I liked that. I enjoyed reading these books myself and that is still my test. If I enjoy the book as an adult reader, it is YA. If I don’t. it’s not. A rough rule of thumb, biased I know, but there it is.

My first novel, Every Step You Take, was based on a true story about a group of students from another comprehensive school in the city who got mixed up in a murder hunt. I wrote it like a thriller because I knew that was a popular genre (and I like thrillers) but it had ‘added value’: strong themes - a continuum of male violence from date abuse and rape to murder and powerful female characters (these were the days of early Val McDermid and V.I. Warshawski).

My latest novel, This Is Not Forgiveness, is also a contemporary thriller, taking in events happening now, soldiers returning from Afghanistan, post traumatic stress disorder, other kinds of social disorder, all mixed into the complexities and stresses of 21st Century teenage life. I’ve written in a lot of other genre, notably historical fiction and horror, but I’ve always kept those first principles in mind: strong stories, added extras, keep it real, be honest, don’t patronize. Even with all that, you still might not get it right…

The Edge can be a difficult place and uncomfortable, but then how comfortable should it be?

For more information please visit Celia's website, her official Facebook Fan Page, or follow her on Twitter @CeliaRees. 

Huge thanks to Celia for being this week's guest author at The Edge.

YA Interrogation with Guest Blogger Cicely Loves Books!

This week we are delighted to welcome Cicely from Cicely Loves Books as our guest on the Edge …  

Cicely with Karen Mahoney

Hello, EDGE-y people! I’m Cicely and I blog over at Cicely Loves Books (you can tell I toiled over that one). I blog pretty much solely about YA, and have been doing so for about a year and a half now, (and LOVING it). I’m also a pretty big fan of the old Caps Lock/exclamation point, so forgive me if I come across as being incredibly excitable. I’m not *always* like this, I promise. Just when I’ve been at the ole’ caffeine, (Which, I guess, is all the time…)

So, Cicely, WHY do you read and write about YA books?

I read and write about YA mostly because, well, I am a teenager. So it only really seems appropriate, right? Also, it makes me feel pretty normal when I’m reading a contemp and the characters are like me and I can just relate and it makes me feel a bit less, well, weird. Makes me feel less alone sometimes, I guess. As does the awesome community!

We're big fans of weird at the Edge! So what are the most ORIGINAL YA books that you've read?

Hmm, most original? That’s a tough question, but surprisingly some of the most original YA (in my opinion) are retellings of things. I think it really takes an original perspective to take something familiar and turn it into something brand new, so books like Shadows on The Moon and Long Lankin, and Nevermore (which is all just kind of based on Poe’s work). Also, anything that takes on a new format in storytelling, I guess, and uses a new style to tell the story like Stolen and The Perks of Being A Wallflower.

OK, but what is a TURN OFF for you in YA fiction?

Ugh, INSTA- FREAKING-LOVE. It needs to be less frequent. I’m not saying it should stop, it should just appear less. Please.

But what makes for a GREAT YA book?

Originality. Interesting characters, or at least relatively realistic/relate able ones. An interesting plot line. Stuff that makes any book great, I guess?

Side-stepping reality for a moment, which YA characters would you most like to take OUT TO DINNER and why?

What YA characters would I most like to take out to dinner...? Katniss Everdeen, because I reckon we’d both have equally bad table manners and I wouldn’t have to pretend I knew why there’s about 7 different types of fork. Plus her tales from the Arena would be pretty interesting, if not off-putting. But if we’re talking date-dinner, probably Will Herondale: witty, tortured, and permanently dressed in Victorian clothing. Perfect dinner companion!

On a similar theme, who is your ideal YA HERO / HEROINE and why?

My ideal YA heroine is probably Korra from the Legend of Korra. I know she’s already fictional, but I don’t care, I want her in a book now please. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen this show, but it’s AMAZING and I love Korra and I can’t wait to see her character development and I really shouldn’t have brought this up because now I won’t stop talking about it. *deep breath*

(Half an hour later …) What makes you uncomfortable or question THE BOUNDARIES of YA?

Nothing, really, apart from gratuitous sex scenes I guess. Not that I’ve even come across stuff like that in YA, ever. Yeah… But sex is cool as long as it isn’t really into detail, drugs are cool as long as they’re being represented realistically and not advocated, swearing – well, I swear and I am a teen, so that’s fine. Yeah.

What would you LIKE to see happening in YA fiction over the next five years?

Less paranormal romance, more horror/suspense paranormal fiction. I want scary things to actually be scary. And more high quality YA comtemps! And UK YA!

But what do you think will ACTUALLY BE the next big thing in YA?

Hmm, there’ll still be this thing with Dystopia going on for a little while I think, but I think there’ll be more high fantasy over the next few years, too.

So, give us your TOP FIVE YA/Teen books.

Only five?! But it changes all the time! Okay, I’m going to try. At this very minute, my favourites are:

The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky (so excited for the film!) 

The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

Everything by Sarah Dessen ever

Graffiti Moon by Cath Crowely

Chime by Franny Billingsly

Finally, could we ask for a recommendation – if you read one book this year, read THIS … 

Perks of Being a Wallflower. I only read it for the first time this year, but it’s just really good. If you’re not a big reader, it’s short and simply written, but it’s really honest and melancholy and it’s just a really good book, regardless of it being YA or whatever.

OK, that's a few more books to add to the Edge bookshelf! Thanks for being this week's guest on the Edge Cicely and for taking the time to answer all our questions so thoroughly!

Thanks for having me! 

Don't forget to check out Cicely's own blog over at Cicely Loves Books.

How Book Blogging Changed My Life by Guest Blogger Beth Cohen

This week we welcome guest blogger Beth Cohen to the Edge. Beth started her "tween-teen book blog" Page-Turner in 2011 and posts regular book reviews, news and interviews. Find out below how blogging has changed Beth's life …

Book blogging changed how I saw authors, how I saw books and most importantly, what a community really was.

Blogging has given me a huge sense of responsibility, and it has made me truly realise – if you give up on something it will never work. I was disappointed when I didn’t immediately start getting loads of author interviews and ARC’s, but I soon realised that is not what blogging is about.

When I first started book blogging, almost a year ago, I was really frightened at the idea of putting my own thoughts live onto the internet. For a short space of time between the 25th of July until around the middle of August, I didn’t really post properly. However, I started looking at the amazing book blogs out there and really wanted to create something special like that. So, could I have made my blog all on my own? No, definitely not! I really wanted to make a blog to share my thoughts and it was how amazing all of the other blogs were that made me want to do something like that. Now, blogging has really turned into a part in my life and has made me LOVE, LOVE, LOVE reading even more. (I have an addiction!!) 

Before I started blogging, I used to give up on a book easily when I didn’t like it, but now I hardly ever give up on books. I never even dreamt I could ever get in contact with an author, but when I started blogging I quickly realised just how awesome and kind authors and bloggers are; they have made my blog what it is today.

There is a wide age-range of book bloggers out there, but whatever the age difference, there is always something in common: a love for reading, and a love for blogging which will tie us all together and create the community that we have. I am so proud to be a book blogger and am honoured to be part of the community. I’ve learnt so much and am so grateful to all my fellow bloggers and the authors who have kindly taught me throughout the length of time my blog has been set up. I have made a lot of friends through the blogosphere and I hope I will stay friends with them forever.

I want to keep on blogging for years and years and years. I’m so thankful that blogging will have always been apart of me, and the experience has been amazing.

If you love to read, and love to share your thoughts on books, and are thinking about doing a book blog. I really, really encourage you to do so. If I had completely given up between that short space of time, I would have not started blogging properly, and I honestly don’t know what I would do without it! I was scared about not being accepted when I started book blogging, but authors, publishers and fellow bloggers are so welcoming and kind, and were so amazing to me when I first started blogging.

So, fast forward almost exactly a year since I started blogging on the 25th of July, and book blogging has become a huge part in my life.

And it has also changed it.

Thanks to Beth for guesting here at the Edge. Keep up the good work at Page-Turner.

Young Adult Books Interrogation with Guest Book Blogger Paula Hardman from PaulaSHx

This week our guest at the Edge is Paula Hardman who has been blogging about books at PaulaSHx since the start of January 2011. On the blog Paula describes herself as a blogger, book reviewer, social media addict, beta reader, aspiring writer and Harley Davidson lover – amongst other things!

Originally from Brazil, Paula came to the UK aged seventeen, intending to study English and Photography for three years and then return home to finish a degree in Journalism. Needless to say, it didn't quite go according to plan. She blames her husband for the fact she is still here. "I had no plans of having a beautiful little girl in this trip either, but I like it better this way. Life's curves made my life complete!"

Over the coming months we will be inviting a number of book bloggers to guest here at the Edge. Huge thanks to Paula for volunteering to be the first to undergo the Edge interrogation. So, without further ado, lets shine that light and let the questions begin … 

Paula, WHY do you read and write about Young Adult books? 

I love YA Books! Your teens might be a little traumatic, but they are also the years when you start finding out about adult life - falling in love, discovering who you are and what you can do - without the responsibilities of actually being an adult. When I read YA it evokes all those feelings and memories in me and I enjoy reminiscing about my younger years when things were more dramatic, but simpler.

What are the most ORIGINAL YA books that you have read?

Oh! This is a hard one as most of the books I have read recently are following trends while giving it their own twist. I would have to say: The Mortal Instrument Series by Cassandra Clare – she walks the fine line in between all fairy tales and different religions while creating her own very different world; Mercy series by Rebecca Lim – a very interesting take on angels and a double story as in every book Mercy must discover who she is as well as help the life she’s inhabiting for the moment; and Wicked Lovely by Melissa Marr – a very political take on fairy courts and love.

What is a TURN OFF in YA fiction?

A very slow pace or events that are so unrealistic you are left scratching your head and asking: “seriously?”

What makes for a GREAT YA book?

Convincing tension, romance, characters and action. I like when an author tells me there are cats raining from the sky, but he/she does it so convincingly, that I actually believe it’s plausible. I also like finding out the backstory while the action in the present plot is still going on - when the pace slows too much to fill you in I usually lose interest.

Which YA characters would you most like to take OUT TO DINNER and why?

I am a girl, so I will have to say Seth Morgan from Wicked Lovely – the alternative but extremely clever and wise sort – and Cole St.Clair from Maggie Stiefvater’s Wolves of Mercy Falls – the bad boy with brains.

Who is your ideal YA HERO / HEROINE and why?

I like strong female leads, girls who can hold their own and kick butt, so I adore Isabel Culpeper from Maggie Stiefvater’s Wolves of Mercy Falls and Isabelle Lightwood from The Mortal Instrument series by Cassandra Clare. They are not the main characters on any of these books, but I sympathise with them as we have the same attitude and way of thinking. I’m a little sceptical, sarcastic and straight to the point like they are.

What is your dream YA ROMANTIC PAIRING and why?

Cole St.Clair and Isabel Culpeper (Wolves of Mercy Falls) – they are both fighting their demons and finding their feet. And while they are both really messed up, their dramatic and complicated relationship actually helps them work through their issues. It’s realistic, you know? Real relationships are not perfect and this one isn’t either.

What makes you uncomfortable or question THE BOUNDARIES of YA?

When things become too graphic. And it’s not just YA, this could also apply to adult books. I think the magic of a book lays on letting the reader imagine half of the scene themselves, so they ride the book with you. When you are a teen, you are discovering all sorts of things about yourself - that includes principals, sexuality, beliefs and boundaries- and it would be unrealistic of a book talking about teens not to tackle that to some extent. That is not to say that it can’t be done with taste and touch. Swearing, for example - if added at the right scene, it enhances the mood or the character’s reaction. If dropped in constantly to replace another word, it’s just rude. A heavy making-out session in between characters is another one – we all know the chase is a lot more interesting than actually winning the game. It’s the tension of flirting that gives you the butterflies, not characters that can’t leave each other’s faces alone.

What would you LIKE to see happening in YA fiction over the next five years?

I would love to see YA treated with a little more respect. It’s a genre like many others. It annoys me when you tell people you read YA and they say: “Oh, I read proper fiction.” You have to read what rocks your boat, and YA rocks mine.

What do you think will ACTUALLY BE the next big thing in YA?

It sounds like there is a whole undead thing going on at the moment. Historical Fiction also seems to be getting stronger, but I really like the ones about real life issues (Edge Authors), if done properly, they can be really interesting, helpful and raise awareness for the issues.

Give us your TOP FIVE YA/Teen books.

In no particular order: Mercy series by Rebecca Lim, The Mortal Instruments by Cassandra Clare, Wicked Lovely series by Melissa Marr, 15 Days Without a Head by Dave Cousins, and Sabado a Noite by Babi Dewet (this is a Brazilian author and the book is so far only written in Portuguese).

(And no, we didn't bribe Paula to include one of our Edge authors in her list!)

If you read one book this year, read THIS … 

This is not actually a new book, but The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery is A.M.A.Z.I.N.G. It works on two levels: If you read it to a child, it’s about the adventures of an alien prince. If you read in between the lines, it’s a serious critique on society and its priorities. My favourite quotes are:

“Grown-ups like numbers… If you tell grown-ups, ‘I saw a beautiful red brick house, with geraniums at the windows and doves on the roof…,’ they won’t be able to imagine such a house. You have to tell them, ‘I saw a house worth a hundred thousand francs.’ Then they exclaim, ‘What a pretty house!’”

“In those days, I didn’t understand anything. I should have judged her according to her actions, not her words. She perfumed my planet and lit up my life. I should never have run away! I ought to have realised the tenderness underlying her silly pretensions. Flowers are so contradictory! But I was too young to know how to love her.”

Thanks very much to Paula for being our guest and providing some great answers to our questions. Be sure to take a trip over to PaulaSHx for some great reviews and much more besides.

You can also follow Paula on Twitter @PaulaSHx

If you would be interested in submitting to interrogation, or have something you'd like to say about teen and young adult books, send an email to edgewritersATyahooDOTcoDOTuk. Thanks.

Writing Badly by Guest Author Conrad Mason

Hello Edge readers, and thank you to the Edge for having me! I thought I'd write about one of the most important steps I took towards becoming a published author: writing badly.

It's well known that many authors get through several 'drawer novels' before they finish one that's fit to be published. I have drawer novels too, except that none of mine are longer than a few paragraphs. I've started hundreds of stories, but for years I never got further than the first page.

The trouble was that I was so determined to write beautiful prose that I never got anywhere. If you spend a quarter of an hour crafting each sentence, how can you ever finish a 300-page book? I had no idea how the professionals did it. Presumably they had some special skill that I lacked. 

Then I read a book called How To Write A Novel by John Braine. It's got some startling pieces of advice in it, some of which I've chosen to ignore ('try not to get married or permanently entangled before your novel is finished'). But overall it's the most inspiring book about writing that I have ever read (and I include On Writing by Stephen King in that – although that's also wonderful).

Here's the epiphany bit: 'With the first draft all that matters is writing the maximum number of words.'

It felt dangerously illicit – was I really allowed to obsess over word count and throw quality out of the window? I had to find out. I set myself a goal of at least 300 words a day, every day, and I kept writing. No checking back. No obsessing over details. No stopping, no matter what. There were times I lost my way, but I just carried on, writing bad sentences and even bad scenes in the knowledge that I'd go back and fix them later. The editor part of my brain was screaming at me all the way, but I ignored it. John Braine had set me free!

Of course, what I got at the end was a mess. Half-formed characters, awful prose, plotlines going nowhere... But that didn't matter because it was 50,000 words of mess. Something that I could edit, and hone, and turn into a novel.

I think the problem before was that I had been trying to write and edit at the same time – and for me, separating those two processes made all the difference. In the first draft I allowed my ideas to come tumbling out as fast as possible, no matter how incoherent they were; then in the second draft I picked them apart and put them back together again.

So to this day, if I'm ever struggling to write well, I just write badly instead. I'd rather do that than write nothing at all.

The Demon's Watch by Conrad Mason is out now in hardback, published by David Fickling Books. 

And rather well written it is too ….

Follow @conradwrites on Twitter and see The Demon's Watch trailer at www.conrad-mason.com

Notes on the Edge – by Guest Author Jane McLoughlin.

This week we are delighted to welcome Jane McLoughlin as our guest author at the Edge. 


Jane's debut YA novel At Yellow Lake hit the shelves yesterday. We recommend you hurry to your nearest bookshop and grab a copy!

Now over to Jane …




Most YA writers have a notion of “edge”. It’s where our characters live, whether or not we think of ourselves or our work as “edgy”.

If I were to come up with a definition of “edge”, I couldn’t come up with anything better than these lines from the song Common People by Pulp:

" You will never understand

How it feels to live your life

With no meaning or control

And with nowhere left to go."

This certainly sums up the world of YA as I see it. Young people, in real life as well as in fiction, often have no control. They have no (legal) way to make money, they can’t vote, school is a requirement, not an option, they are bound to their parent’s lifestyle choices. In “edgy” YA fiction these parental choices usually veer from inept to misguided to downright dangerous . So, just as in the song, characters in YA fiction often have “nowhere left to go.”

To me, this is one of the great challenges (and joys) of writing YA. How do we create a believable world where powerless characters can take control? How do we find realistic ways for the voiceless to express themselves and for the defenceless to fight back?

But it’s the first line from that stanza that challenges me the most: “You will never understand how it feels...”

As a middle-aged, middle class woman, this hurts, because the truth is that I don’t understand. I look at the problems faced by the characters I’m writing about and, for the most part, I have never had their experiences, have never been even half as vulnerable or exposed.

Jane McLoughlin

OK, bad and scary things have happened to me in my life (and, like an actor, I use my emotional memory of these situations very often) but I’ve never been abandoned or let-down by my family, I’ve never been without the support of stable and loving people. YA characters, including ones that I have created, are often left to fend completely for themselves, and this something I can only, as yet, imagine.

So, as a writer, there is a limit to my “edge” and I have to acknowledge that.

Another great line from Common People is “everybody hates a tourist” and I worry about that sometimes, too. (All right, so I worry about a lot of foolish things). But isn’t that what all writers are to an extent? Just day trippers? Whatever we write about, whatever dangers we create for our characters, aren’t we able to turn off the laptop, make a cup of tea, tweet about the day’s word count?

The answer to this is yes, of course we are. For YA writers this is particularly problematic—the edgy world of the teenager is often far from the more rounded, secure worlds that adult writers generally inhabit. But, as writers, we still have to go to the edge—even while acknowledging that it is only our edge, not the edge. We have to be unafraid to visit some dark places, to take some creative risks, to follow our characters into the turbulent water of our own painful memories. And even if we can’t, as the the song says, understand what it’s like to be powerless, at least we must to try to remember. And if we can’t remember?

Then we’ll have to do what writers do best—imagine the edge, and head towards it.


At Yellow Lake by Jane McLoughlin is out now in paperback, published by Frances Lincoln. Visit your local bookshop or click here to buy a copy.

Keep up to date with Jane's latest news via her blog.

Caring For Awkward Characters – by Guest Author Nik Perring

This week we are delighted to welcome Nik Perring as our guest author at the Edge. Nik is the co-author of Freaks! and the author of Not So Perfect.

For me, Story is all about characters. A story is, in my opinion, what happens to the people in it. They shape it, by their actions and their circumstances and how they react to them. You can’t have a story without characters. 

So, as an extension of that, I think it’s fair to say that you can’t have a good story (however you qualify that) without having a good main character, or ensemble. And how do decide who your characters are going to be? Well, that’s the difficult bit, isn’t it, especially when we don’t find out who they really are until we’ve seen how they’ve reacted to the troubles that are put in front of them in our stories. 

For me, the best characters are the ones we can see a bit of ourselves in. Empathising is important – we have to care, one way or another, about what happens to the people we’re reading about - but what can be equally important is recognising the traits we might wish we didn’t have, or the ones we dislike to see in others. And I’m not really talking about the broad character types – the bullies, the tyrants, the liars – though they can all make for being exceptionally interesting – I’m talking about subtler things. I’m talking about things like insecurity and selfishness, about vulnerability and not quite understanding the world as, it would appear, the rest of the world does. I’m talking about the characters who struggle, who worry, who might be anxious or uncomfortable, or awkward or just plain weird. 

I’m talking about the things that make the characters real, that make them human in the same ways we are, and that’s what makes us care what happens to them. Because, really, that awkwardness, that sense of not quite fitting in – it’s something I think we’ve all felt to some degree at some point in our lives – and that’s what makes us, us. 

But it’s not just about empathy, nor is it only about honesty. It’s so much more than that – it’s about opportunity. As I said earlier, if our characters are interesting and good, then there’s a good chance our stories will be too.

Nik Perring is the co-author of Freaks! published by The Friday Project (HarperCollins) and the author of Not So Perfect (Roast Books). 

He blogs at http://nikperring.com and tweets as @nikperring, and his characters tend to be very awkward and very weird indeed.